Tag Archive for: Requirements & Requirements Management

This image shows two speakers who will lead a discussion on achieving ASPICE 4.0

In this blog, we recap our recent webinar, “Achieving ASPICE 4.0: Overcoming Key Challenges” – Click HERE to watch the entire thing.

Achieving ASPICE 4.0: Overcoming Key Challenges

The path to ASPICE 4.0 compliance can be complex. Gaining a deeper understanding of traceability requirements, process consistency, verification criteria, and special characteristics is essential to improving your development processes and achieving compliance.

Join us as Sathiya Ramamoorthy – Senior Solutions Consultant, Jama Software, and Ronald Melster – Managing Director, Melster Consulting GmbH, discuss the four biggest challenges organizations face on their path to ASPICE 4.0 and learn actionable strategies to overcome them.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to implement robust traceability methods for ASPICE 4.0
  • Techniques to maintain consistency across processes
  • How to define and implement effective verification criteria
  • The significance of special characteristics in automotive software development

BELOW IS AN ABBREVIATED SECTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT

Ronald Melster: Thank you for the warm introduction and thank you very much for inviting me to today’s webinar. I’m excited to be here with all of you to discuss the challenges and updates that we encounter in the latest version of the ASPICE standard. So let’s get started and explore what these changes mean to our industry and how we can best adapt to them. Why are we doing this webinar? The release of ASPICE 4.0 has brought new requirements and expectations and created some confusion.

In this session, we will discuss four key areas of change that are especially challenging and potentially misleading. This webinar is designed to clarify these updates and help you understand the implications. Here are the four changes I will talk about. First, we will look at the changes on how to connect elements across the V-model. Then we move on to consistency, as there is an increased emphasis on maintaining consistency across work products. I would share how this topic impacts your daily work. Then we discuss our favorite topic, the verification criteria. The base practice and the work product for the verification criteria have been removed from the standard. The question is if the need for a verification criteria is gone as well. And the last change I will talk about today are the special characteristics. This new concept was introduced with PAM for 0.0. I will explain why this is necessary and how it can be implemented.

Some of you may know me already, but for those of you who don’t yet, let me introduce myself briefly. I’m Ronald Melster or simply Ron in the automotive world. As one of Europe’s longest-serving ASPICE assessors, competent since 2005 and now principle, I’ve dedicated my career to guiding organizations through process improvements, always striving to balance structure with pragmatism. After my early work in software engineering and quality assurance at Fraunhofer, where I researched on knowledge management and 3D visualizations, I entered the automotive industry in the year 2000. Over the years, I found that meaningful assessments involve much more than simply rating. It’s about helping people to understand the why behind each process. Today, I coach companies and teams through their ASPICE improvement projects, working with companies like Bosch, Audi, and Porsche to help them reach the capability levels one, two, and even three. Together we are shaping more effective motivated teams that understand not just the how, but the purpose behind the ASPICE standard.

RELATED: Best Practices to Accelerate Your Automotive Spice (ASPICE) Capabilities

Melster: The first topic I will talk about is traceability. A very common misunderstanding is that a trace must be a direct link to click on, and then I end up at the target element. This was never the expectation and has been clarified with PAM 4.0 in the respective VDA guidelines. Before I run you through the possible traceability techniques, let’s discuss why traceability is essential for successful project management and product development, starting with the impact analysis of change requests. Traceability allows us to clearly track the origin and implications of each change request. By establishing traces, we can see where a change affects other components, documents, or requirements. This is particularly crucial for ensuring that safety and security requirements are met consistently. Next, we have root cause analysis of problems. With traceability, we can identify not only the immediate issue, but also trace it back to the process step where it was introduced.

This can help to prevent similar issues in future cycles by allowing us to adjust processes or documentation at the root cause level, instead of merely fixing surface-level symptoms. And traceability can help to show the completeness of work products. Traceability helps us to verify that all necessary parts of the system are complete and that each requirement has been successfully implemented. This is especially critical in safety and security cases, where missing traces could mean non-compliance or safety issues, or vulnerabilities.

Finally, traceability enables progress tracking. By using trace links, we have a clear and consistent overview of how far along each requirement is in the process. This enables project managers to track progress more accurately. In essence, traceability ties every piece of the project together, ensuring that we understand the why and how behind each element, and helping us maintain quality, safety, and security. Let’s have a look at the first traceability technique, which are naming conventions. The idea is to use the name of one artifact to identify another artifact. For example, the name of the unit, which is defined as part of the detail design, is used to identify the source code file or the function in the source code. Of course, the naming convention has to be described in a central document to make it available to everyone in the project.

Our next traceability technique are editorial references. This method uses the same ID as a text reference across documents that need to be connected. It’s a straightforward approach, often called traceability light, because it doesn’t require complex tools at the start, just the ability to update text in both documents. The question remains how to trace back. There are a few approaches that we can take. The first one is contextual searching. In the traceability strategy, we can specify how to search within the databases or text documents for these IDs, allowing to navigate across documents. Another method is to create a mapping table serving as a lookup tool that aligns IDs from one document to another. Finally, we can use tools like Rectify, that scan the text documents and provide statistics about the coverage of the traces.

RELATED: Jama Connect® for Automotive

Melster: Our third traceability technique is hyperlinking. This approach creates direct connections between tools, making it easier to trace items across different systems. With hyperlinking, each item has a direct link embedded in the document or tool, so rather than manually searching for information, you simply click the hyperlink and it brings you straight to the related item in another tool or document. Our fourth and last technique for establishing traceability are tool links. Many modern tools can create direct links or traces between different elements or requirements, streamlining the process of tracking dependencies and relationships across the project. Tool links often add semantic context to each trace, such as implements or is implemented by. This provides clarity on how the elements are related, making it easier to understand the purpose behind each link. One powerful feature these tools provide are suspect links. These are automated flags that notify us when a linked requirement or element is modified. This way we can quickly perform impact analysis and assess whether changes in one area affect other linked elements, helping us manage risks and ensure consistency across the project.

Another change that comes with PAM 4.0 are clusters of elements. This means that instead of establishing links from one single element to another single element, we can now create traceability links at a higher level. For example, we can trace groups of requirements that share common goals, we can trace two architectural elements within a particular subsystem, or we can trace software units associated with a specific functionality. This flexibility allows us to handle complex systems more efficiently, as we are not restricted to tracing every single element individually. However, this comes with more responsibility, as it is more important to remember that the level of traceability must still be appropriate for the product, and it is more complicated to provide the statistics for coverage, because we cannot just simply count items which are connected. And finally, the justification for consistency becomes much more important. For example, do the test cases which are linked to a cluster of requirements completely cover this cluster, or is there something missing?

Another important change I would like to highlight is that it’s now possible to trace from stakeholder requirements on SYS.1 directly to software requirements SW.1. There is no need to link via the system requirements to the system architecture to the software requirements anymore, if the stakeholder requirements are specific enough and have no impact on any other part of the system other than the software. This approach is often used in software-only projects, where the stakeholder requirements are already very specific. However, in system projects, the impact on the system must be considered in a comprehensive way. The same approach can be used for hardware requirements and mechanical requirements as well.

Another big change from PAM 3.1 to 4.0 is that there’s now a combined base practice for traceability and consistency. In ASPICE PAM versions 2.5 and earlier, we used to assess consistency and traceability together in one based practice. In PAM 3.1, they were split into two based practices for traceability and consistency, and VDA guidelines define the strong relationship between these two base practices, because these two concepts are inherently connected. To explain why, let’s consider this. Consistency depends on having effective traceability. Without solid traceability between work products, we are not able to guarantee that the elements align correctly throughout the development process. For example, if requirements are not traced to elements of the architecture or test cases, showing the evidence for consistency between these artifacts becomes nearly impossible. Therefore, checking for both consistency and traceability as a unified practice makes sense, as it ensures that all pieces are in sync and meet the intended quality standards.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Automotive

Melster: Let’s have a closer look at an example for consistency, which base practice or base practices in SW.1. Software requirements analysis deal with consistency. Obviously, base practice five directly addresses consistency by requiring us to establish bi-directional traceability between software requirements and the system architecture, and software requirements and system requirements. This base practice ensures that each software requirement is directly aligned with the system architecture and linked back to the respective system requirements. The idea here is to maintain clear connections, ensuring that the requirements are accurately reflected across all levels of design. The second base practice, which deals with consistency is base practice number one, it’s a little bit hidden in node two. This node defines characteristics for requirements like verifiability, comprehensibility, freedom form implementation and surprise surprise, not contradicting other requirements, which is the synonym for consistency.

So we have two types of consistency in software requirements, external and internal. External consistency ensures alignment between software requirements, system requirements, and the elements of the system architecture. Each of these checks involves typically two different documents and it compares different artifacts, software requirements with system requirements, and software requirements with the elements of the system architecture. This is why I call this consistency, external consistency. And we have to fulfill BP-1, which can be done checking for internal consistency. For SW.1, that means software requirements are checked against other software requirements. This activity is essential for ensuring the integrity of our requirements. The primary goal of this verification is to ensure that the requirements do not contradict each other. There are many references and standards such as ISO IEEE 29148, ISO 26262-8, and the INCOSE Guide for Writing Requirements. They have one characteristic in common, that requirements shall not contradict each other.

This is one of my favorite topics. I have had discussions about this for years. Do we need an explicit verification criteria, yes or no? Now the base practice and the work product have been removed. What does this mean? This removal of the explicit verification criteria requirement in ASPICE PAM 4.0 marks a significant change, streamlining the base practices for evidence of verifiability. While previous versions of ASPICE emphasized having a separate verification criteria as a formal step, this requirement has been softened in PAM 4.0. However, demonstrating variability remains a crucial practice as we have seen. Projects must still make sure that there’s an evidence that each requirement is verifiable, though it’s no longer mandatory to document a distinct verification criteria for each requirement. This adjustment suggests that verification is evolving in focus. Instead of a string and isolated criteria, there are other ways to ensure the verifiability, performing review by the test team for example.

RELATED: The Impact of ISO 26262 on Automotive Development

Melster: This ensures that requirements can be tested or writing simpler requirements if this is possible, of course, but for straightforward requirements, there’s no need to have an explicit verification criteria. However, for more complex system requirements, writing a verification criteria might still be recommended, so writing a verification criteria has become a best practice instead of a base practice. The decision and the responsibility for justifying this decision lies with the development projects now. And the last topic I would like to talk about are special characteristics. What are they and where do they come from? These special characteristics are often identified through structured risk assessments, such as FMEA, failure mode and effects analysis, which is commonly used to prioritize potential failure risks. Or HARA, hazard analysis and risk assessment, which helps identify safety critical elements. And of course TARA, threat analysis and risk assessment, which focuses on cyber security and vulnerabilities.

In terms of application standards, like IATF 16949, specify that these special characteristics should be integrated into the system architecture, as well into the hardware design. This ensures that all key attributes affecting system safety and compliance are identified from the start. An essential part of managing special characteristics is ensuring that they are verifiable. According to VDA volume one, special characteristics must be documented in a way, so that they can be reviewed and validated. This verifiability ensures that all compliance and safety requirements are traceable and systematically implemented. This concludes our little journey into the changes and challenges with PAM 4.0. If you want to learn about RSPICE, consider joining the Melster Academy or book a personal meeting with me to find out how you can elevate your ASPICE expertise. I am looking forward to support your journey. Thank you very much for your attention. I will now hand it back to Sathiya and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have at the end of the webinar.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS WEBINAR IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Achieving ASPICE 4.0: Overcoming Key Challenges

In this blog image, we portray how Jama Connect surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and Traceability.

In this blog, we recap a section of our eBook, “The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability” – Click HERE to read it in its entirety.

The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect® Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

To adapt to increasing industry challenges and complexities, innovative organizations are now requiring best-in-class software to scale development, reduce risk, save time, and ensure compliance to quality, safety, and security regulations.

As organizations strive to deliver innovative products while navigating regulatory requirements, the tools they use for requirements management and traceability can make or break their success. This eBook is designed to help you understand the critical differences between Jama Connect® and Codebeamer, two leading requirements management solutions, so you can make an informed decision.

The Requirements Sector

The landscape of requirements management has undergone significant transformation. Traditional tools (like IBM® DOORS®) which once dominated the market, are now considered outdated. These legacy systems often lack the flexibility, ease of use, and integration capabilities required by modern teams. As a result, organizations are turning to modern solutions like Jama Connect that are built to meet the needs of today’s dynamic development environments.

Why Jama Connect?

Jama Connect stands out as a leading requirements management solution because it is designed with the user in mind. Its modern, user-friendly interface, combined with powerful features like comprehensive traceability and real-time collaboration, ensures that teams can manage requirements and risks effectively throughout the product, systems, and software lifecycle. Jama Connect also emphasizes customer success, offering expert support and training to help teams maximize their investment. Ease of use, rapid deployment, pre-configured well-documented industry frameworks, and in-house subject matter experts provide the fastest time-to-value/ROI without sacrificing quality or safety.

RELATED: See why users rank Jama Connect as the #1 requirements management tool on the market in the most recent G2 Report

The Clear Advantages of Jama Connect Over Codebeamer

If you’re comparing Jama Connect to Codebeamer, one thing is clear — Jama Connect is the only purpose-built requirements management platform that delivers Live TraceabilityTM which allows engineering and other teams to
quickly and easily access the latest and most complete information for any requirement, no matter the stage of development or tools used. This real-time capability boosts productivity by ensuring teams work with the latest data and reduces risks like delays and defects by finding issues early. In addition, Jama Connect accelerates your product, systems, and software development by managing user needs and product information across the end-to-end development lifecycle.

Only Jama Connect Delivers Live Traceability™ Across Best-of-Breed Tools

Other vendors lock you into inferior platforms. Only Jama Connect seamlessly integrates with your tools of choice across engineering teams.  Only Jama Connect can manage the state of development across all integrated teams and tools. Jama Connect’s unique and industry-specific Traceability Information Models define the relationships and expected behavior across teams and tools.

LEARN MORE

Our customers consistently tell us that they chose Jama Connect over Codebeamer for the following reasons:

1. Ease of Use and High Adoptability

Jama Connect’s intuitive design and user-friendly interface make it easy for teams to adopt and use. Unlike Codebeamer, which can be complex and challenging for new users, Jama Connect ensures that teams can start managing requirements effectively with minimal training. Users insist on a requirements management and traceability solution that is easy to use so that both internal and external stakeholders can efficiently access, share, and review information in a single source of truth, increasing and speeding up the adoption across teams for a better ROI.

The ease-of-use is not only imperative for users but also for administrators. Jama Connect offers an intuitive and user-friendly administration interface that enables admins to adapt the tool to their organization’s needs without having to learn overcomplicated configuration settings and concepts.

2. Modern Integration and Collaboration Capabilities

Jama Connect provides comprehensive traceability and impact analysis, enabling teams to manage change effectively and reduce the risk of errors. The platform seamlessly integrates with other best-of-breed tools (including Jira and Azure DevOps) in the development ecosystem, ensuring that teams can work efficiently without having to change their other development tools. In contrast, Codebeamer focuses on working solely with other PTC tools and its own limited application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities.

Modern product and software development requires optimal real-time collaboration between stakeholders. Jama Connect provides an enhanced collaboration experience with its communication streams and advanced Review Center, enabling both internal and external stakeholders with the capabilities to perform formal and iterative reviews.

3. Intelligent Engineering Management

Jama Connect empowers Intelligent Engineering Management by addressing a critical challenge faced by engineering and product development organizations: the lack of real-time KPIs and metrics during development. This gap often leads to delays, budget overruns, and product defects or recalls. Jama Connect uniquely transforms traceability into a measurable instrument, enabling teams to track real-time metrics and KPIs throughout the product development process. By providing a comprehensive overview of project progress and aligning it with required processes, teams can identify gaps early, mitigate risks, and avoid missed requirements. With its Live Traceability™ and integrations with other best-in-breed engineering tools, Jama Connect ensures that both internal and external data are seamlessly managed, driving informed decision-making and on-time project delivery.

4. Strong Customer Support

We know that our customers need a support team that makes them a priority. That’s why Jama Connect offers unparalleled customer support (including 24/7 support for any production outages), with dedicated customer success teams that work closely with you to ensure you achieve your goals. In contrast, Codebeamer’s support can be limited, making it difficult for your teams to get the help they need when they need it.

5. Scalable and Flexible

Jama Connect is highly adaptable, making it suitable for a wide range of industries and project sizes. Whether your organization is in automotive, aerospace, medical devices, or another industry, Jama Connect can be tailored to meet your specific needs, often getting you up-and-running quickly with custombuilt data frameworks to satisfy your industries regulations and best practices. Additionally, the platform offers flexible deployment options, including cloud and self-hosted, giving you the freedom to choose the best setup for your organization.

6. Fastest Time to Market/ROI

Deploy Jama Connect’s easy-to-use interface in weeks, not months, with easy updates and high performance. Preconfigured frameworks are built-in to satisfy industry regulations and help teams ease the path to compliance, along with in-house industry focused subject-matter experts and exceptional customer support.

7. Lowest Total Cost of Ownership

With simple and straightforward administration and no need for custom scripting or continuous updating, Jama Connect has the lowest total cost of ownership in comparison to Codebeamer. Jama Connect scales easily without big infrastructure investment, and with unlimited no-cost access for extended internal/external stakeholders, all team members can be involved with additional costs.

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS EBOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY:
The Clear Choice: Why Jama Connect Surpasses Codebeamer for Requirements Management and End-to-End Traceability

In this image, we show a vehicle lit up by several digital points to portray automotive & semiconductor trends.

In the world of automotive and semiconductors, where the pace of technological innovation seems to accelerate daily, staying ahead of trends is critical. That’s why we sat down with Neil Stroud, Jama Software’s industry expert with decades of experience spanning major players like Intel, Arm, and Samsung. Neil has been at the forefront of the functional safety and semiconductor evolution, witnessing firsthand the challenges and transformative changes that shape these industries.

In this exclusive interview, Neil shares his unique perspective on the latest industry dynamics, the impact of global supply constraints, and how the automotive industry’s strategic relationships with semiconductor vendors are evolving. He also discusses Jama Software’s role in helping both sectors address increasingly complex requirements and integration challenges, driving efficiency and reducing risk across the supply chain. Join us in exploring how Jama Connect empowers companies to manage complexity, enhance traceability, and accelerate their time to market.

Driving Innovation: Quarterly Automotive & Semiconductor Trends with Neil Stroud

Kenzie Jonsson: Thanks for sitting down with me today, Neil! I’d love it if you could spend a little bit of time telling us about your background and career path.

Neil Stroud: Prior to joining Jama Software back in April of this year, I’d spent most of my career in the semiconductor industry, working for companies like Samsung, NEC, and PMC-Sierra. I also spent 12 years with Intel, and then moved into the IP space with Arm who are one of the key players in semiconductor IP. Directly before joining Jama Software, I spent time with CoreAVI, a niche software company in the safety-critical graphics space. Almost twenty years of my career has been spent in the functional safety domain. It wasn’t by design; it was more by accident. I didn’t set out to get into that domain at all. It all came about through my time at Intel where I was calling on a big industrial automation company and they asked me the question, “Hey, so when are you going to start supporting functional safety with Intel architecture?”

Of course, at that point, I didn’t know what it was, what it meant, what it was all about. One thing led to another, and I stumbled into the world of functional safety and was given a great opportunity at Intel to go… I was going to say, go and lead it, but it was more me volunteering and saying, I think we should be doing this. And Intel the senior leadership at Intel saying, “Oh, go on then, go do it.” That’s exactly what I did. So, it was quite nice because you’re acting as a startup within the safety of a big corporation like Intel. At that point you start to look at the fundamentals – what does safety look like? What do we need to do as a company? How do we sell it? How do we make money out of it? What are the technical issues? What problems are the industry facing? That kind of stuff. So, I pretty much became a GM of my own startup at that point, which was a great experience.

That was back in the day when complex semiconductor functional safety wasn’t really a thing. So, we were blazing the trail, not just for Intel but for the whole industry. So, little did I know back then where it would lead. It’s been so much fun. That’s also what took me to Arm – to drive the whole functional safety strategy across their ecosystem. So, all of that obviously led me into adjacent businesses especially automotive, as safety is of paramount importance where I worked with the big OEMs and throughout the supply chain. Now here I am at Jama Software bringing all of that experience of semiconductor, automotive, and software and apply that into the requirements management tools domain to drive our presence and growth in the automotive and semiconductor segments.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Automotive

Jonsson: What changes have you been part of at Jama Software recently to help us better meet the needs of our customers?

Stroud: It’s a really interesting time to join Jama Software. Obviously, we’ve been successful as a company over the preceding years. I’m amazed by the number of different market segments that are using Jama Connect. There are some obvious ones like automotive, semiconductor, medical, consumer electronics, and aerospace and defense. But there are some emerging segments as well, which is great to see, like insurance companies and state departments and beyond. Clearly, Jama Connect is a tool that transcends verticals. But of course, we need to be able to tweak and tailor that to accommodate the unique needs of each market segment. Functional safety and cybersecurity are great examples of these differences. That’s what’s exciting as part of the change with Francisco Partners acquiring us back in April for $1.2 billion. That to me is a leading indicator that they’re betting on us to continue growing and we are investing heavily to continue to delight our current customers and of course help new customers achieve new levels of innovation. Placing that bet is exciting for all of us at the company. As a result, one of the changes we made at that time was to really double down on the vertical focus. So, bringing in an organizational structure that allows us to do and in turn drive even more alignment with the needs of each market segment.

It’s good for us. But more importantly, it’s good for the customers because we can talk in their language, we can better understand their problems, and of course we can partner with them to solve their problems. And that in turn means tailoring our product to better suit their needs. So, it’s a win-win. It’s a confirmation of the importance of those verticals to Jama Software and sends a clear message to that we are listening and here to partner with them on their growth journey. So, it’s exciting for me and I see that excitement across the whole company.

Jonsson: Can you tell us what you’re seeing in the industry with the conversations that you’re having with our customers and prospects?

Stroud: Well, I cover both automotive and semiconductor industries. There’s obviously a lot of overlap between the two, and I think that’s an increasing trend we’ve seen over the last few years. The automotive guys have been building a lot more of a strategic relationship with the semiconductor vendors. Not least because when the supply constraints kicked in a couple of years ago, production lines were coming to a halt because they couldn’t get hold of the smallest, tiniest, cheapest components. And at that point, it is interesting how it created a real forcing function. The automotive segment said at that point, “Right, we aren’t going to get burnt again.”

So, they did one or two things. Some went out and tried to tie down the semiconductor vendors contractually to say, “Look, in the event that this happens again,..” and it will happen again because the semiconductor industry tends to work on about a seven-year cycle of oversupply versus constraint, “we want to guarantee our component supply.” The car OEMs and tier-one suppliers obviously didn’t want to get caught in that again. I don’t have visibility into how successful those discussions were, but I don’t think it will necessarily prevent a recurrence. The good news is that there is huge investment going into building new fabs that will provide significant capacity increases in the coming years.

The other interesting dynamic that happened was some of the auto guys said, “Well, screw that. We’re going to do our own silicon.” It sounds easy when you say it quickly, but there’s an awful lot to it when you commit to that solution. Questions like, “Okay, so how are you going to do that?”, “Are we going to go and engage with a design house or we’re going to hire a team of semiconductor design engineers,” “Which fab supplier will we use?” “Will they guarantee supply?”

It’s not a trivial undertaking and to make it work from an ROI perspective it’s probably a ten-year journey. And in the meantime, you’ve still got to work with what you’ve got. The other issue is once you get down that path, you are committed and it’s an expensive commitment to make. The downside is you don’t get the benefit of volume that the big guys like Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, or NVIDIA can offer you. They build millions and millions of chips and can amortize the cost across many customers and markets. If you’re building your own, you don’t get that advantage, but you mostly own your own destiny. So, pros and cons.

So that’s one dynamic. I think the other dynamic we’ve seen in automotive generally over the last five years is a repositioning of what’s important. If we go back, even just five years, we all thought we would be driving autonomous vehicles right now. There’d be mass deployment. You and I would both have one on the drive. Of course, that hasn’t happened because we all realized how difficult it is. I think we were in denial for a while, but that forced us to pivot to solving the software defined vehicle challenge. If we can get that taken care of, then that kind of leads us to the autonomous world anyway. And we can solve it in bite-sized chunks. So thankfully the automotive industry and the semiconductor industry, and probably lots of other industries now are focused on a software-defined vehicle as an intermediate step.

Solving this challenge doesn’t just apply to road vehicles. I think when you look at industrial automation, that’s the same. Do they want to get full autonomy? Of course they do. Is it a challenge? Yeah, it is. So, software-defined has a role to play there. Same in A&D, same in a lot of the other verticals. So, there are a lot of synergies between the verticals as well. That created, I think, clarity, but it also created a seismic shift for the car OEMs in that the OEMs themselves, and I’m talking more about the incumbent suppliers, the big guys like VW, Mercedes, Ford, GM and others. History shows they’re so used to being completely in charge of their own destiny – when you need something, you just put a team together and you go build it. Those days are gone. You look at complexity in a modern vehicle, whether it’s the hardware or the software, you just can’t do that these days. It’s not scalable.

So, you have to rely on the supply chain to drive the innovation and deliver those pieces, those elements, and then you as the OEM have to integrate them. But that’s not a world they’re used to. And it obviously introduces a whole world of complexity.

RELATED: Compliance Made Easy with Jama Connect for Automotive and Semiconductor Development

Stroud: That’s another area where using Jama Software really pays dividends to ensure the whole supply chain is seamlessly connected from a requirements perspective resulting in faster design and delivery across multiple vendors and a better-quality product overall. A modern vehicle can have upwards of 100 million lines of code going into a modern high-end vehicle and this is increasing exponentially. Those software elements are coming from a hundred different vendors. Some of those are safety-related, and some of those are security-related. All of a sudden as an OEM, I’m responsible for integrating all of that, checking it works together, checking it’s still safe, checking it’s still secure, and then rolling it out through the door for consumers to go and purchase a new vehicle.

At the same time, vehicle suppliers can use this new SDV approach to drive new business models that allow post-sales upgrades and updates. If a car doesn’t have a feature on the day of sale, in a year’s time the owner could say, “Hmm, it’d be nice to have that new feature.” You log into your account, put your credit card details in, and as if by magic, the new feature arrives over the air to your vehicle the next day. That’s a whole new world and we are only scratching the surface today.

So, I guess the punchline is from our perspective, and doing what we do, it’s all about efficient requirements management and traceability. This applies not just to the OEMs, but throughout the supply chain as well, to ensure the elements from those hundreds of different vendors all come together. Those requirements have got to be exquisitely accurate and all the independent interdependencies mapped out correctly to be sure that you’re not violating a safety goal or creating a bug in the system.

This way you get into traceability… How well is my project going? How healthy is it? How many of those requirements are covered right now and tested and using that capability to reduce the number of recalls, drive efficiency in the design team, reduce the risk, all those good things. Of course, this level of detail isn’t just important to the engineering teams. It can also be rolled out to senior management who are likely more interested in risk, cost, time-to-market and so on.

So, the market’s really coming to us. Jama Software is now the largest supplier of requirement management solutions overall, which we’re immensely proud of. But we have to learn from the market and our customers how Jama Connect changes grows and morphs as a solution to enable that ubiquitous risk reduction and efficiency improvement. So, there are some big factors at play.

So that’s automotive. The semiconductor segment is interesting as well. It’s a very different world, with different care abouts.

We’ve done very well in the semiconductor space overall, but it still frightens me to see how many spreadsheets are used to manage the business in the big semiconductor companies. And that’s speaking from experience because I lived in that world for a long time. There are way too many spreadsheets out there for doing requirements tracking. When you’re working that way, there’s no single source of truth and that will get you into trouble, guaranteed. It will cost you big with bugs in the silicon. So, it’s imperative to partner with the semiconductor industry and really drive change, accelerate innovation and solve tomorrow’s supply constraints. That’s on the chip design side, but also more recently, we’ve got the CHIPS Act, which is kick-starting a massive investment in the semiconductor industry to drive fab capacity to meet the huge growth in demand for chips.

So, we see the big players such as Intel, Samsung, and TSMC, all investing billions and billions of dollars to put fabs into place to meet this growth in demand and technology, which is exciting. The challenges are different to the auto market but guess what, these chip manufacturers need robust requirements management to run their business. And again, a lot of it’s been running on spreadsheets for a long time.

Now, we’re seeing, of course, headwinds in both industries. We still see that with EV vendors on the automotive side. We see even today challenges in the semiconductor industry with some consolidation of cost and trying to get costs under control. Jama Software has a critical role to play in that transformation. We can help drive efficiency and shorten cycles and time-to-revenue. All those things play into huge cost reductions for all. We are using our expertise in both product and deployment to educate and drive incremental success for our customers.

Kenzie Jonsson: Thank you for your time today, Neil! I really enjoyed this conversation, and I look forward to catching up with you next quarter!

Requirements Advisor

Jama Connect® Features in Five: Jama Connect Advisor™

Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In this blog series, we’re pulling back the curtains to give you a look at a few of Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes.

In this Features in Five video, Katie Huckett, Senior Product Manager at Jama Software, will introduce viewers to Jama Connect Advisor™, Jama Connect’s natural language processing (NLP) tool, designed to improve requirement quality.

In this video, learn how Jama Connect Advisor enhances your product management by:

    • Reducing authoring errors
    • Increasing clarity
    • Optimizing foundational product needs and requirements managed in Jama Connect Cloud

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Katie Huckett: Hi. I’m Katie Huckett, Senior Product Manager at Jama Software. In this video, I’ll introduce you to Jama Connect Advisor, an add-on to Jama Connect Cloud that uses engineering-based natural language processing to optimize requirements authoring. It helps you write effective, well-organized requirements with speed and accuracy.

We’ll explore how Jama Connect Advisor can enhance your product development by reducing errors, increasing clarity, and optimizing the foundational requirements managed within Jama Connect Cloud. Jama Connect Advisor is designed to help teams author complex requirements quickly and accurately using AI and engineering-focused natural language processing. It minimizes disruption to engineering workflows while improving quality. How does it work?

Jama Connect Advisor applies the globally recognized INCOSE requirements rules and EARS syntax patterns. Even experienced engineers find it challenging to follow all forty INCOSE rules and six EARS patterns while writing even a single requirement.

That’s where Jama Connect Advisor steps in to streamline the process and enhance productivity. Now I’d like to show you a demonstration of how Jama Connect Advisor enables teams to intelligently improve requirements quality and usability, minimize requirement ambiguity and contradictions, which are the source of seventy to eighty-five percent of rework, and save time authoring, reviewing, analyzing, and updating requirement statements.

RELATED: Jama Connect Advisor™ Datasheet

Huckett: There are a few different ways that you can use Jama Connect Advisor within the Jama Connect Cloud application.

Let’s start by adding a new requirement. Once you’ve added your requirement into the description field, you’ll notice the highlighted text to analyze the prompt underneath the description field. Once you’re ready, go ahead and select the text that you’d like to analyze and select analyze selection.

Underneath the description field, you’ll see a quick summary of your INCOSE score as well as any errors found, if any. You can move on at this point and save your item, or you can go ahead and view the details if you’d like to make changes at this point. So I can see on the slide over panel, the text that’s been analyzed, what my INCOSE score is, eighty-seven percent, and then the different identifiers that I’ve flagged it for the INCOSE rules. Underneath, you’ll see the EARS errors, if any were found. You’ll also see some information about the EARS notation pattern that your requirement might align with. I’m gonna go ahead and save this item, and I’ll wait to make my changes in a moment.

Now that I’ve saved that, let’s say I want to analyze a whole group of existing requirements. I’m going to go ahead and analyze all items within my set on the side here. So I’ll select all items and you’ll notice the batch analyze button, appears in the top right-hand corner. Once you select that, you’ll be given a summary view of what will be analyzed. So you can see I’ve got seventeen items selected here. All seventeen of those items happen to have a Jama Connect Advisor-enabled field on it, and then we have thirty-four fields per, these items. So it appears we have two Jama Connect Advisor enabled fields, per each item within this group.

Once you select analyze, the slide of our panel will pop up on the right-hand side. You’ll notice your group of requirements. Each item is listed at the top within this drop-down. You can navigate with the drop-down or the directional arrows. And then underneath, we also have a field drop-down. So as I mentioned, we have two fields per item type on this particular example. So I can swap between those as well either using the drop down or the directional arrows to move through.

So now that I’ve come in here and I see the, recommendations, I’d like to go in and edit my item to make some changes. So here, I want to remove some of the items that were flagged. I’m gonna remove this and just update this to say, you know, users can create a login using we don’t wanna use pronouns, per that flag. So I’m gonna change this to using an Apple ID, email.

RELATED: The Essential Guide to Requirements Management and Traceability

Huckett: I’m gonna update this to be an actual logical condition with or social media. And then I’m gonna remove the example of LinkedIn because I don’t necessarily need that, and I’ll just update that to end the sentence there. Once I’ve made my changes, I can select the text again in the edit quick edit mode, analyze the selection, and I can see here my INCOSE rule score is now a hundred percent. I still have to deal with my ears errors, but so far so good on INCOSE.

I can view my details again in the slide-over panel and update here. I can also close that back out, and I can return to my batch analysis results by selecting the latest analysis link at the top, and that will take me right back in where I was before I made those changes. Now I can go ahead and save my item and complete those changes going forward. If I want to work through these requirements across multiple sessions or maybe I just wanna have a benchmark of what my score was before I started making my edits, you can then generate a report within the slide-over panel.

That will open up in your reports history page where you can download the report into Excel.

Once you open the report that was generated, we have a few different tabs you can work through in the worksheet. The first one just gives you some general information. What’s the average score of your requirements, the minimum, and maximum score, your total number of valid requirements, and then if you did have any invalid requirements as well. The file analysis reports, tab will give you a complete breakdown of all the requirements that were analyzed, their score, and then any corresponding INCOSE flags that may have popped up within the analysis.

We also have an explanation of each INCOSE flag as long as with their associated description. And then if your, report did happen to include any invalid requirements for any reason, those will be included in their separate sheet as well. Thank you for watching this demonstration of Jama Connect Advisor. If you would like to learn more about how Jamala Connect can optimize your product development process, please visit our website at jamasoftware.com

If you are already a Jama Connect customer and would like more information about Jama Connect Advisor, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Jama Software Consultant.

To view more Jama Connect Features in Five topics, visit:
Jama Connect Features in Five Video Series

This image portrays top challenges in industrial manufacturing and offer practical solutions to address them.

Tackling Industrial Manufacturing’s Biggest Challenges: Solutions That Work

Industrial manufacturing is undergoing a transformation driven by technology, market demands, and a rapidly evolving workforce. However, this evolution brings its own set of challenges that manufacturers must navigate to remain competitive. Below, we’ll explore the top challenges in industrial manufacturing and offer practical solutions to address them.

1. Supply Chain Disruptions

The Challenge: Global events like the pandemic and geopolitical tensions have exposed the vulnerabilities of supply chains. Material shortages, delays, and fluctuating costs have become routine, making it difficult for manufacturers to meet production targets.

The Solution:

  • Diversified Sourcing: Manufacturers should explore multiple suppliers, ideally in different regions, to reduce the impact of disruptions in one area.
  • Advanced Analytics and Forecasting: By leveraging data analytics, manufacturers can predict potential disruptions and adjust procurement strategies to maintain inventory levels.
  • Digital Supply Chain Management: Implementing technology like real-time tracking and automated inventory management systems ensures better visibility and responsiveness across the supply chain.

2. Talent Shortage and Skills Gap

The Challenge: As industrial processes become more automated and technical, there’s a growing need for skilled labor, particularly in areas like robotics, data analytics, and equipment maintenance. However, the industry faces a shortage of qualified workers due to retirements and a lack of interest from younger generations.

The Solution:

  • Reskilling and Upskilling Programs: Companies can invest in training programs for existing employees, focusing on emerging technologies and technical expertise.
  • Collaboration with Educational Institutions: Partnering with local schools and universities to create apprenticeship programs and internships can help build a pipeline of future talent.
  • Adoption of Automation: Automating repetitive or dangerous tasks can offset the impact of labor shortages while enhancing operational efficiency.

RELATED: IEC 61508 Overview: The Complete Guide for Functional Safety in Industrial Manufacturing

3. Adapting to Industry 4.0

The Challenge: Industry 4.0 technologies, including IoT, AI, and machine learning, offer vast opportunities for improving manufacturing processes. However, integrating these technologies can be expensive and complex, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Solution:

  • Start Small, Scale Gradually: Manufacturers should begin by digitizing a single aspect of their production (e.g., predictive maintenance) and expand as they see ROI.
  • Cloud-Based Solutions: Cloud platforms offer scalable, cost-effective ways to implement Industry 4.0 tools without a significant upfront investment in infrastructure.
  • Cross-Department Collaboration: Ensure alignment between IT, engineering, and operations teams to facilitate seamless integration and minimize disruptions during implementation.

4. Meeting Sustainability Goals

The Challenge: Governments and consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable practices from manufacturers. This includes reducing emissions, minimizing waste, and adopting environmentally friendly materials. However, transitioning to green manufacturing can be costly and complex.

The Solution:

  • Energy Efficiency Audits: Conduct regular audits to identify areas where energy consumption can be reduced, whether through upgrading equipment or adopting renewable energy sources.
  • Circular Economy Practices: Embrace recycling and remanufacturing to minimize waste, both in production and post-consumer use of products.
  • Collaboration with Stakeholders: Partner with suppliers and customers to promote sustainable practices across the entire value chain.

5. Cybersecurity Risks

The Challenge: With the growing adoption of digital technologies comes an increased risk of cyberattacks. These attacks can disrupt production, compromise sensitive data, and damage a manufacturer’s reputation.

The Solution:

  • Regular Security Audits: Conduct frequent assessments of your digital infrastructure to identify and address vulnerabilities.
  • Employee Training: Train staff on cybersecurity best practices, particularly in recognizing phishing attacks and securing devices.
  • Robust Incident Response Plans: Develop and test response plans to minimize downtime in case of a cyberattack, ensuring quick recovery and damage mitigation.

RELATED: The Top Challenges in Industrial Manufacturing and Consumer Electronic Development

6. Maintaining Operational Efficiency Amid Complex Demands

The Challenge: Manufacturers are under pressure to produce more custom products, reduce lead times, and improve quality—all while maintaining efficiency. Meeting these demands often strains existing processes and resources.

The Solution:

  • Lean Manufacturing: Implement lean principles to eliminate waste in production and streamline processes, improving both speed and efficiency.
  • Automation and Robotics: Invest in robotic process automation to handle repetitive tasks, reducing human error and speeding up production.
  • Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Adopt systems that can easily switch between different product types, accommodating the increasing demand for customization without sacrificing efficiency.

Conclusion

Industrial manufacturing is facing unprecedented challenges, but with the right strategies and technology, companies can navigate these obstacles and position themselves for long-term success. From investing in workforce development to embracing digital transformation, the solutions are within reach. By proactively addressing these challenges, manufacturers can enhance their competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic market.

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Steven Meadows and Kenzie Jonsson.

This image portrays a video blog series, with this topic being on Software Defined Vehicle development

In this blog, we will preview a section from our video, “Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development” – Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.

Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development

Welcome to our Expert Perspectives Series, where we showcase insights from leading experts in complex product, systems, and software development. Covering industries from medical devices to aerospace and defense, we feature thought leaders who are shaping the future of their fields.

We are excited to introduce Florian Rohde, an expert in electrification, variant management, software defined vehicles, continuous integration and validation, and AI in automotive development. With more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry, Florian has worked with companies large and small, from Siemens to NIO to Tesla Motors.

In this episode, we discuss:

    • Challenges in software defined vehicle development
    • Variant and configuration management in SVDs – and which companies are excelling
    • Balancing documentation, complexity, and speed

Below is a preview of our interview. Click HERE to watch it in its entirety.

The following is an abbreviated transcript of our webinar.

Kenzie Jonsson: Welcome to our Expert Perspectives series where we showcase insights from leading experts in complex product systems and software development, covering industries from medical device to aerospace and defense. We feature thought leaders who are shaping the future in their fields. I’m Kenzie, your host, and today I’m excited to welcome Florian Rohde, an expert in electrification, variant management, software-defined vehicles, continuous integration and validation, and AI in the automotive industry. With more than 20 years of experience in the automotive industry, Florian has worked with companies small and large, from Siemens to NIO, to Tesla Motors. Without further ado, I’d like to welcome Florian Rohde, who will be speaking with Matt Mickle, Jama Software’s very own director of automotive and semiconductor solutions.

Matt Mickle: Thanks, Kenzie. So my name is Matt Mickle. I run our solution development for automotive and semiconductor at Jama Connect. I’ve been with the company at Jama for about 11 years and worked as a consultant for most of that time. And now my team handles most of the consulting and development of solutions for automotive and semiconductor. And I live out in Europe, in Amsterdam. Came over here to help start up our European headquarters. And I’m joined today by Florian Rohde

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution for Automotive

Florian Rohde: Absolutely. Thanks, Matt. So I’m in the automotive industry for about 20 years. I started as an intern at Bosch, and then I started as a junior test engineer at a company called Siemens VDO, which then was incorporated into Continental. Back in the day, we were building electric power steering systems. So highly safety critical components in your car. So I got grounded into functional safety right from the beginning. I spent about seven, eight years at that company, both in Germany and in Romania. And then in 2012, I joined a startup called Tesla Motors, and that is bringing the interesting parts to our discussions here, I guess.

So in 2012, Tesla had about 2,000 employees worldwide. I was the first member and the founder of a team for vehicle software validation. So every software release, every software functionality on the vehicle level went through my signature for about six years. I counted over 700 releases in that time to the end customer and way more software that went through our test systems in that time. And after six years there at Tesla, I was one year at NIO as a director of integration of smart components. And starting 2019, actually, I became a consultant advisor all around SDV, software-defined vehicles, and basically trying to facilitate the communication between what you can call the old world and the new world. So the new players on the market and established 100-year-old OEMs because I speak both languages. I’ve been in both worlds. So I’m helping both sides, helping the new players really to understand regulatory things and scaling and things like that and helping the established players really to understand the role of software in today’s and tomorrow’s vehicles.

Mickle: Well, I know that when we started to talk about having this chat, one of the things that you’d mentioned is that you’re hearing quite often in the industry about challenges, especially as people are trying to shift into this modern way of working with software-defined vehicles. There’s still a lot of challenges around variant handling and configuration management. You have some strong background in handling some of those things, especially while you worked at Tesla. How would you say that your approach had to change when you started to think in a more software-defined vehicles perspective when it comes to variant management?

Rohde: Yeah. I think in general, there’s a lot of challenges. Variant management is one of them. But I think let’s focus on that for the purpose of this talk. Let’s not focus on engineering culture or software skill sets and so on. That’s, for sure, other topics we can talk about. But today, let’s talk about variant management, configuration management, etc. So on one hand, I see gigantic numbers of configurations out there when you look at legacy OEMs. And somebody told me just Ford F-150 numbers, they were like hundreds of thousands or even higher than that. So on one hand, you see the companies struggling with the variety of variants actually of their product. But then on the other hand, you also see R&D teams struggling with those variants, both in how to handle them on the development side of things, but even more so on the testing side of things, especially… So I’m a test engineer, originally. And for test engineers, additional variants are usually a nightmare because it just means basically one-on-one growth of your testing efforts.

So there is a problem that needs to be solved and it’s on two sides. It’s one, how do you solve that problem in your product itself? And the other thing is, how do you solve that problem in your tool chain? So things like what you’re doing on the requirement side of things, specification, and so on. Let’s look at the product for now. So Tesla had a different approach to this problem. They actually made themselves agnostic to the variety of variants. What does that mean? That means they developed their product software first and they were designing the software in a way that it can handle pretty much an endless amount of variance. Of course, and we can talk about that, there’s challenges to the validation of things. There’s challenges to how you handle software updates. There’s challenges how you handle releases. But we had a pretty good process in place to do so. But the alpha and omega of the whole thing is that there’s a system in place that allows the software to handle the variance without being handcuffed to some process from the past.

RELATED: Strategies for Mitigating Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Development Risks and Reducing Costly Recalls

Mickle: Okay. So a lot of the challenges that I hear, and maybe some of what you hear, is especially around the alignment of the software with the hardware in terms of releases, considering those are evolving at different paces. So since the software is evolving so fast and handling multiple configurations, how do you account for that with what you’re doing with either tooling or the product?

Rohde: Right. So I think there’s a consensus in industry by now that the hardware has to be able to accommodate new software features over time. Or in other words, it has to be designed for a little more than it originally offers at start of production. There’s still a lot of hesitance around legacy carmakers because it’s a financial discussion, right? So I don’t think from technical point of view, anybody would disagree that the hardware should be overdesigned by, let’s say, 20% so the software can start evolving over time and creating new cool stuff. But it’s always a question how you actually finance that.

The good news here is that actually, hardware and compute power becomes more reasonable in pricing. So we’re not talking about dollars per bytes in memory anymore. We started talking about dollars per gigabytes, right? So we can actually make that happen a little easier. But obviously, there’s a strong legacy of hardware driving the timelines, and then the software goes on the hardware to make the functionality work as designed and then go into the car as a component. So now in the next generation of cars, you hear a lot the term of decoupling. So you’re decoupling software from hardware. What does that actually mean? That means that on the technical side of things, you have to find ways to have your software actually handling the car’s compute resource and not as a conglomerate of several separate ECUs. So we’re talking about zonal architecture at one point in the future, we’re talking about high compute power architecture, HPCs.

But on the other hand, it also means organizationally and structurally. So when I go back and look at the Tesla example, Tesla has one software that runs on all their cars. And the cars are, for sure, not all the same hardware. As a matter of fact, I like to sparkle that in here right now because a lot of people think Tesla holds the variance low, but that’s not the case. Yes, they have only four or five models in the field, five actually by now. But they actually perform some sort of a facelift statistically every week. So while in a traditional car-making you wait for about three to four years before you put in a flurry of hardware changes, and in between, the car stays more or less unchanged. What we experience at Tesla is that every week, there’s some new hardware going into the car. So there’s some new costs down available. There’s something better available. There’s some replacement parts available. It goes in right next week. And that means that you have thousands and thousands of different variants of Teslas driving out there, even though from the outside, they all look the same.

So what we did is we decoupled the software in a way that it’s “smart enough” to handle all these variants. So the way that works is there’s a package and that package of software contains all different options and variants, and it also contains the information who is allowed to play with who, so what variant is allowed to play with what variant of the other car component and so on based on our validation and release process.

But in general, in a very simplified way, the car knows what it is, and that’s already a huge difference to a lot of legacy carmakers. So the car has a digital information about its components in hardware and in software and in mechanics. And based on that information, it receives the software package and it builds its own personalized update out of that. And it’s talking to the components and updates the components with the right versions based on the information it has. This information is on the other hand also mirrored up into what they call the mothership, so the server area. So that information is available in real-time, and I’d like to talk about that a little bit because I think it’s extremely valuable, for example, for the validation and release process to set your priorities.

So let’s say I only have time to do one combination. So I would like to reach most people with my release today. Of course, I’ll do the next combination tomorrow and the day after. But today, I have only time for one and I want to reach the most people. So I can go and I can actually look what combinations are out there that are relevant for this release and I can prioritize my validation on that. Actually, at one point, we went so far that we even took time zones into consideration that we say, “We can validate all of this large area of the fleet, but hey, that will be midnight or 1 AM by the time they get it. So they will not install it for another eight hours or something like this. So let’s focus somewhere else.” So all this information is making it extremely powerful to manage your priorities and both in research… Sorry. And both in development and in validation.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS WEBINAR IN ITS ENTIRETY:
Expert Perspectives: A Conversation About Variant and Configuration Management in Software Defined Vehicle Development

This image portrays an announcement that Jama Connect has once again been named the overall requirements management software leader by G2

Jama Connect is Once Again Named by G2 as the Overall Leader for Requirements Management Software

We’re excited to announce that Jama Connect has once again been recognized as the overall leader in the G2 Grid Report for Requirements Management Software for Fall 2024! G2’s rankings are based on verified user reviews and data gathered from across the web, analyzed through their proprietary v3.0 algorithm. The Fall 2024 G2 Grid Report reflects results calculated through August 27, 2024, showcasing the best in the field.

In addition to being named the top choice for requirements management, Jama Connect earned several prestigious accolades spanning all business size and multiple geographies for Fall 2024, including:

  • Overall Leader
  • Momentum Leader
  • Small-Business Leader
  • Mid-Market Leader
  • Enterprise Leader
  • EMEA Leader
  • Europe Leader

Learn more about the Fall 2024 G2 Grid for top Requirements Management Software products:
DOWNLOAD IT HERE

This recognition highlights the exceptional value we bring to customers transitioning from document-based approaches for managing complex product, systems, and software development. We are deeply grateful to our users for their trust and for sharing their open and honest feedback on our product, services, and support.

Customer Feedback Highlights

“Product Design teams need a requirements management tool like Jama [Connect]. Using Jama Connect allows our software development team to have a well-organized and well-written set of requirements. It allows us to more easily maintain a baseline of features in our continuously evolving software.” — Mark M., Mid-Market – G2.com

“Jama [Connect] is not only a ‘document oriented’ ALM tool, it gives the organization the ability to map the project structure the product structure making it an easy entry point for R&D folks. Configured properly, it is a real technical and regulatory ‘single source of truth.” — Frederic Fiquet, Director, Systems Engineering – G2.com

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

We are committed to providing the best possible experience for our users, and being named the overall leader by G2 is a testament to the success and satisfaction our customers have found with Jama Connect.

From all of us at Jama Software, thank you!

Jama Software is always looking for news that would benefit and inform our industry partners. As such, we’ve curated a series of customer and industry spotlight articles that we found insightful. In this blog post, we share an article from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, titled “Quality Management System Regulation: Final Rule Amending the Quality System Regulation – Frequently Asked Questions”

Quality Management System Regulation: Final Rule Amending the Quality System Regulation – Frequently Asked Questions

Update: August 7, 2024

The revised part 820 is now titled the Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). When referring to the rule that is currently effective, the FDA uses the term “Quality System (QS) Regulation” or “QS regulation.” Because both the QMSR and the QS regulation are located in part 820, wherever possible, the FDA has used the terms “QS regulation” and “QMSR.”

Listed are resources pertaining to the Quality Management System Regulation requirements and resources for implementing a quality management system:

  1. “AAMI/ISO 13485:2016, A Practical Guide
  2. “AAMI TIR102:2019, U.S. FDA 21 CFR mapping to the applicable regulatory requirement references in ISO 13485:2016 Quality Management Systems
  3. IMDRF/GRRP WG/N47 FINAL:2024 (Edition 2), “Essential Principles of Safety and Performance of Medical Devices and IVD Medical Devices”

On January 31, 2024, the FDA issued a final rule amending the device current good manufacturing practice (CGMP) requirements of the Quality System (QS) Regulation under 21 CFR 820 to align more closely with the international consensus standard for Quality Management Systems for medical devices used by many other regulatory authorities around the world.

This rule amends 21 CFR 820 by incorporating by reference the quality management system requirements of the international standard specific for medical device quality management systems set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 13485:2016. The FDA has determined that the requirements in ISO 13485 are, when taken in totality, substantially similar to the requirements of the QS regulation, providing a similar level of assurance in a firm’s quality management system and ability to consistently manufacture devices that are safe and effective and otherwise in compliance with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act).

The rule amends the title of the regulation and establishes additional requirements that clarify certain expectations and certain concepts used in ISO 13485. These additions ensure that the incorporation by reference of ISO 13485 does not create inconsistencies with other applicable FDA requirements. This revised part 820 is referred to as the Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). The FDA has made conforming edits to part 4 (21 CFR part 4) to clarify the device Quality Management System (QMS) requirements for combination products. These edits do not impact the CGMP requirements for combination products.

This action continues the FDA’s efforts to align its regulatory framework with that used by other regulatory authorities to promote consistency in the regulation of devices and provide timelier introduction of safe, effective, high-quality devices for patients.

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions related to the final rule. These questions and answers provide clarity and do not introduce any new policies or modify any existing policies.

RELATED: Streamline FDA CSA for Medical Devices and Life Sciences with Jama Connect®

Q: Why is the FDA taking this action?

A: The FDA is focused on advancing and continually improving the quality, safety, and effectiveness of medical devices to meet patient needs. This action, if finalized, will harmonize key areas of a device manufacturer’s Quality Management System and will more closely align the United States with many other regulatory authorities around the world.

Q: What is the FDA doing to prepare for harmonization of the Quality System regulation with ISO 13485?

A: The FDA intends to engage in a variety of implementation activities including, updating information technology systems, training FDA staff responsible for assessing compliance with medical device quality management system requirements, developing an inspection process, revising relevant regulations and other documents impacted by this rulemaking, and communicating and educating stakeholders, including affected FDA staff, on the change.

Q: What training will FDA staff do?

A: FDA staff will be trained on the final rule, the revised inspection process and changes to associated policies and procedures. Additionally, broader Quality Management System trainings have been, and will continue to be, deployed within the FDA to familiarize affected staff with quality management system concepts and requirements.

RELATED: Jama Connect for Medical Device & Life Sciences Development Datasheet

Q: How will this rule impact FDA staff and programs?

A: FDA will continue to conduct its operations to protect public health, including inspections, incorporating the requirements of the rule. The greatest impact will likely be to internal trainings, which will be needed to familiarize staff with the new regulation as well as any updates to procedures, processes, and policies as a result of the change.

Q: Will there be a new inspection process?

A: FDA will develop a new inspection process to align with the requirements of the new Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR). The process will be developed for implementation when the rule takes effect (i.e., two years from publication).

Q. Now that FDA has incorporated ISO 13485:2016, what happens if the standard is revised?

A: Any future revisions to this standard would need to be evaluated to determine the impact of the changes and whether the QMSR should be amended. If needed, amendments to the QMSR will be implemented through rulemaking.

Q. When will the new regulation be effective?

A: The rule is effective two years after publication in the Federal Register. Until then manufacturers are required to comply with the QS regulation. The FDA will begin to enforce the QMSR requirements upon the effective date, February 2, 2026.

In this image, we portray the integration between Jama Connect® and CATIA, which assists Traceable MBSE™ through Cameo DataHub

Jama Connect and CATIA: Traceable MBSE™ Integration through Cameo DataHub

For teams taking a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach to systems development, managing complexity and ensuring traceability are crucial. Jama Software’s integration with CATIA Magic, powered by Cameo DataHub, offers a streamlined solution collaboration between requirements, architectures, and mission needs. This integration bridges the gap between Jama Connect and CATIA’s tools, allowing teams to enable a federated data architecture approach and equip stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the system model.

RELATED: A Path to Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) with Jama Connect®

Why CATIA Magic?

As a leader in MBSE solutions, CATIA Magic supports SysML standards. Its commitment to following these standards allows for seamless customization to industry-specific needs, making it a powerful choice for complex system engineering projects.

Integration Benefits

This integration enables real-time synchronization of any Jama Connect data or model element with CATIA Magic, ensuring that teams can collaborate effectively while maintaining traceability across both tools. This connection simplifies complex workflows and enhances the accuracy of a system model’s requirements and architecture, eliminating manual work and reducing errors.

By supporting custom data mappings, bidirectional synchronization, and standard authentication methods, this integration empowers system engineers to trace changes, visualize updates, and maintain alignment across their tools — ensuring not only more informed decision making but also an increased confidence in the system design, and a more efficient engineering process.

Explore Integration in Action

Jama Connect to Cameo Integration: Watch below

RELATED: Jama Connect Interchange™ for Software and Product Development Teams: Live Traceability Realized

Why Jama Connect?

Capabilities from a dedicated requirements management tool such as Jama Connect have built-in collaboration, configuration management, baselines, managing traceability across multiple levels of objects, managing the verification and validation activities, controlling access and change to objects using role-based permissions, and showing real-time workflow states at the object level. Jama Connect’s built-in workflow engine and dashboards give any stakeholder a 1000-foot view, a measurable view of status and progress, and exceptions to the defined systems engineering process.

 

Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Cary Bryczek, Matt Macias, Kenzie Jonsson, and Decoteau Wilkerson.

This image shows a person climbing a mountain alongside gears to represent overcoming development challenges in product development, like test management.

Conquering the Top Test Management Challenges in Product, Systems, and Software Development

Effective test management is essential to deliver high-quality products, systems, and software on time and within budget. As development projects grow in complexity, managing the testing process becomes increasingly challenging. From coordinating teams to handling intricate data, test management can become a daunting task.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the top test management challenges and provide actionable strategies to conquer them.

1. Coordinating Cross-Functional Teams

  • The Challenge: One of the biggest challenges in test management is coordinating cross-functional teams. In modern development environments, testing often involves collaboration between developers, QA engineers, product managers, and sometimes even external stakeholders. Miscommunication or lack of alignment among these groups can lead to delays, errors, and ultimately, a product that doesn’t meet customer expectations.
  • The Solution: To overcome this challenge, establish clear communication channels and define roles and responsibilities early in the project. Implement regular stand-ups and meetings to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Additionally, using collaboration tools like Jira, Confluence, or Slack can streamline communication and keep everyone aligned. It’s also essential to foster a culture of collaboration where feedback is encouraged and acted upon.

“Jama Connect® covers all the needs regarding requirements management. If anyone requires a tool for requirements, tests, and traceability, Jama Connect is perfect for it.” – Software Test Manager, Software Test Manager, Industrial Conglomerates Company

2. Managing Test Data

  • The Challenge: Managing test data, particularly in complex systems or software development, is another significant challenge. Test data must be relevant, up-to-date, and secure, especially when dealing with sensitive information. Inadequate test data can lead to incomplete testing, which increases the risk of bugs and compromised quality in the final product.
  • The Solution: Invest in test data management tools – like TestRail – that allow you to create, maintain, and secure test data effectively. Mask sensitive information to comply with data protection regulations and ensure that test data is regularly updated to reflect real-world scenarios. Automating the generation and management of test data can also save time and reduce the potential for human error.

RELATED: Buyer’s Guide: Selecting a Requirements Management and Traceability Solution

3. Keeping Up with Rapid Development Cycles

  • The Challenge: In today’s fast-paced development environments, especially with the adoption of Agile and DevOps methodologies, testing teams often struggle to keep up with rapid development cycles. Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices demand that testing be both thorough and fast, which can be a difficult balance to achieve.
  • The Solution: Automate as much of the testing process as possible. Automated testing tools can run tests quickly and consistently, allowing your team to keep pace with rapid development cycles. Prioritize test cases based on risk and impact to ensure that the most critical areas are tested first. Integrating automated tests into your CI/CD pipeline will help catch issues early, reducing the need for last-minute fixes.

“If working in Aerospace / Avionics engineering, Jama Connect is a solid option to handle requirements, elements of detailed design and Test artifacts. It also enhances cross-team collaboration through the Review Center, the Stream feature.” – Arthur Bouisson, Process Engineer, RUAG Real Estate

4. Handling Complex Test Environments

  • The Challenge: Test environments are often complex, involving multiple systems, configurations, and platforms. Setting up and maintaining these environments can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Moreover, inconsistent test environments can lead to false positives or missed defects.
  • The Solution: Leverage virtualization and containerization technologies, such as Docker or Kubernetes, to create consistent and reproducible test environments. These technologies allow you to simulate various environments and configurations with ease, ensuring that tests are conducted in conditions that closely mirror production. Additionally, maintain a detailed configuration management process to document and track changes in test environments.

5. Ensuring Comprehensive Test Coverage

  • The Challenge: Achieving comprehensive test coverage is a constant challenge. With the increasing complexity of products and software, it’s easy to overlook certain areas, leading to gaps in testing that could result in critical defects.
  • The Solution: Adopt a risk-based testing approach. Focus on areas of the product that are most critical or most likely to fail, and ensure these areas receive the most attention. Use code coverage tools to identify untested parts of your codebase and supplement manual testing with automated tests to expand coverage. Regularly review and update your test cases to reflect changes in the product or system.

“We know Jama Connect has improved our test coverage (>15%) and allowed for faster more comprehensive reviews. Interestingly, these reviews have found bugs or issues that were not uncovered by traditional directed and random testing.” – Jama Administation, Jama Administation, Internet Software & Services Company

6. Managing Test Automation Effectively

  • The Challenge: While test automation is a powerful tool for improving efficiency and coverage, managing it effectively presents its own set of challenges. Common issues include maintaining the test scripts, dealing with flaky tests, and ensuring that automation delivers the expected return on investment.
  • The Solution: Focus on building robust, maintainable test scripts by following best practices, such as modularizing your code and using descriptive naming conventions. Regularly review and update your automation suite to remove flaky tests and ensure that it continues to provide value. Finally, measure the effectiveness of your automation efforts through metrics like defect detection rates and test execution times, and adjust your strategy as needed.

RELATED: Jama Connect® – Test and Quality Management

7. Balancing Manual and Automated Testing

  • The Challenge: Finding the right balance between manual and automated testing is another common challenge. Over-reliance on one approach can lead to inefficiencies and missed defects.
  • The Solution: Develop a testing strategy that leverages the strengths of both manual and automated testing. Use automated testing for repetitive, time-consuming tasks, and manual testing for areas that require human judgment, such as user experience and exploratory testing. Regularly evaluate and adjust this balance as your project evolves and new testing needs arise.

“We screened three of the top requirements, risk, and test management tools and found Jama Connect scored much higher than the competitors. Jama Connect definitely meets our user needs.” – Principal Systems Engineer, Principal Systems Engineer, Health Care Providers & Services Company

8. Poorly Written or Incomplete Requirements

  • The Challenge: A testing suite can only be as good as the requirements being tested. Poor quality requirements or missing requirements = untrustworthy testing results and increased chances of defects. This is preventable and it’s much more expensive to catch issues with requirements by the time testing is happening. It’s far better to improve requirements quality earlier in the process.
  • The Solution: Educate team writing requirements on best practice frameworks (e.g. Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax – EARS). Review requirements for completeness and quality before building out test coverage. Make sure there’s collaboration between test writers/testers and requirements authors in case there are questions.

9. Undetected Impact of Changes

  • The Challenge: Changes happen, and no one likes to be blindsided. It can be challenging to accurately measure the impact of change and communicate to all impacted stakeholders. Not communicating changes to the appropriate stakeholders can lead to wasted resources on tests that don’t apply or need to be updated, delays, recalls, etc.
  • The Solution: Establish a change control process. Use a tool that helps you track and visualize the potential impact of changes across connected bodies of work, processes, and stakeholders. Review potential impact, discuss tradeoffs, and communicate with impacted stakeholders.

“Jama Software® is always looking for opportunities to improve its requirement management tool offering by adding new features and applications (e.g. Testing, Risk Management, V&V, SW application integration tools, etc.) – Jama Software listens to customer feedback for possible improvements to Jama Connect” – Director, Internet Software & Services Company

Conclusion

Test management is a critical component of successful product, systems, and software development. By addressing these common challenges with proactive strategies, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your testing efforts. Clear communication, effective use of tools, and a balanced approach to testing will help you deliver high-quality products that meet both business objectives and customer expectations.

In the end, the key to conquering these challenges lies in continuous improvement. Regularly assess your testing processes, learn from past mistakes, and be willing to adapt to new tools and methodologies. With the right approach, even the most daunting test management challenges can be overcome.

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Note: This article was drafted with the aid of AI. Additional content, edits for accuracy, and industry expertise by Ashley Ernst and McKenzie Jonsson.